A Fistful of Collars (30 page)

“Jiggs made a payment last week, if that’s what you mean by news.”

“And he found Manny in good health?”

“What are you saying?”

Bernie gave Thad a long look. “Nothing,” he said.

There was a silence. It went on for a while. Finally, Thad said, “Now what?”

Bernie didn’t answer. He was having thoughts, but maybe Thad was missing that.

“If it can be done discreetly, I’d appreciate it,” Thad said. “Not for me. For the others.”

Bernie snapped out of it. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

“Taking me in, booking me, all the procedures.”

“They can wait,” Bernie said.

Thad’s head came up so he was sort of looking down his nose at Bernie, something Bernie was not fond of, not one bit. “Why do I always miss the obvious?” Thad said. “You’re blackmailing me, too.”

Bernie didn’t punch Thad, exactly; it was more like he put his hand on Thad’s forehead and pushed him down on the pillows.

“Let’s go, big guy,” Bernie said.

“You’re leaving?” Thad said.

“Where can you hide?” said Bernie.

I stepped carefully over Brando. He seemed to be asleep, but also purring softly. We walked through the sitting area. The bathroom door was still closed. Felicity stood right on the other side of it. I could hear her breathing.

We went outside and got a bad surprise: no Jiggs. The whole passenger door of the Porsche—meaning my door, although I seldom used it, preferring to hop over on my way in and out—was missing, ripped right out. Bernie glanced around real quick, and leaned into the car, opening the glove box and taking out the .38 Special. I loved the .38 Special, the sight, the sound, the smell,
everything; Bernie was a crack shot, in case that hasn’t come up yet. Coke bottles on a fence rail? Smithereens!

I could almost hear those smithereens, in fact, got a bit distracted by their almost sound, meaning I just about missed a scared cry coming from the direction of the helipad, the cry of a voice I knew. It was Leda.

“Chet? What are you growling about?” And then Bernie heard it, too, and we took off toward the helipad. Parked on the other side of the chopper was Leda’s big silver minivan. Leda and Charlie were outside the van, but not together. In between stood Jiggs, one arm still cuffed to our door, now hanging down to the ground. His other arm was sort of around Charlie’s shoulder, like they were pals. Leda was trying to get to Charlie, but Jiggs blocked her with his huge body.

“What are you doing?” she screamed. “Let him go.”

“Back the hell off,” said Jiggs.

Bernie raised the .38. “Freeze.”

They all whipped around toward us. Leda and Charlie actually did freeze, although I was pretty sure Bernie hadn’t meant them. He’d meant Jiggs, and Jiggs was the one who didn’t freeze. Instead, he yanked Charlie in front of him and curled his enormous arm around Charlie’s little neck.

“Drop the gun,” Jiggs said, but Bernie already had; it clattered on the helipad pavement.

“Hands up behind your head,” Jiggs said.

Bernie put his hands behind his head. At the same time he made this quick tiny whistling sound, more like just air,
fwwt fwwt
.
Fwwt fwwt
? Was that something we’d been working on? I tried to remember.

Meanwhile, Leda was calling out to Bernie, “Bernie, Bernie, do something.” And Jiggs was saying, “Shut your goddamn
mouth.” And Charlie had turned white and was starting to cry. I saw red, and just as I saw red, remembered what
fwwt fwwt
meant, or almost, something about sidling around and coming up on the perp from behind and then getting lots of treats; but too late for any of that. Jiggs was making Charlie cry? I saw red, really saw it, the whole world smeared over with bloody red, even if Bernie says I can’t be trusted when it comes to colors.

Way too late for
fwwt fwwt
: I was already on the move, across the helipad on the first bound and launched on the second. Jiggs saw me coming, his eyes opening wide, and started to raise Charlie right off the ground, trying to turn my Charlie into a shield. But Charlie struggled—what a kid!—and Jiggs had to grab him with his other hand, and that meant dealing with the car door, and then:
KA-BOOM!
I hit Jiggs full in the face, both paws stretched out to the max. Jiggs cried out in fear and pain, and began toppling backward, losing his grip on Charlie. That cry of Jiggs’s sent a thrill right through me, from nose to tail and back. I wanted nothing more than to hear it again.

B
ut I didn’t hear it again, because in what seemed like no time I had Jiggs by the throat, and no human does much screaming in that situation, not in my experience. Why the throat? Hard to explain: it’s just one of those things we in the nation within know how to do when it needs doing. Terror: not something you often saw in the eyes of a dude the size of Jiggs, but there it was, out in the open and unmistakable. I stopped seeing red.

“Easy, easy, big guy.” Bernie was at my side, his voice low and strangely thick, like there was something wrong with his own throat.

I was already taking it easy, sort of. Had there ever even been a question of actually biting? The truth was I hadn’t broken skin, or hardly at all.

“C’mon, Chet. You did great.”

I felt Bernie’s hand on my back—one of the best feelings going—and eased up a bit, almost letting go of Jiggs’s neck completely.

“Chet?”

Okay, okay. Completely.

Bernie stepped in between me and Jiggs. Jiggs felt his neck
with his free hand. He was breathing heavily, like he’d been on a long run, but he went still when he saw the look on Bernie’s face. So did I. Bernie had the gun again, although he wasn’t holding it the usual way, instead gripped it by the barrel, the butt all of a sudden turning into the weapon part. He started to raise it. For a moment, I thought he was about to do something really awful, and so did Jiggs, couldn’t have been clearer on his face. But Bernie paused—the muscles in his arm popping even though it couldn’t have taken much strength to stop raising the gun—and didn’t end up doing anything awful. Bernie was Bernie.

Jiggs started to sit up, propping himself on his elbows. “Look,” he began, “I—”

“Not one goddamn word,” Bernie said.

He turned to Charlie and Leda, standing over by the chopper and hugging each other. “You okay, Charlie?”

Charlie nodded, maybe keeping it up for a bit too long. Leda began moving toward us, her voice high and unsteady. “I don’t understand any of this,” she said. “Why did he—”

“Leda. Stop. I’ll explain later.”

“But—”

“And what the hell are you even doing here?” Uh-oh. Bernie was starting to lose his temper in the way he only did with Leda.

“We were invited, of course,” Leda said, starting to lose hers right back. “For breakfast. Thad’s being so nice, in case you haven’t noticed. Arn has a very cool idea for a script with a major role for an actor of Charlie’s age, and Thad’s—”

“Get in the car,” Bernie said, raising his voice over hers, actually making the air tremble. “Take Charlie home. Don’t come back here.”

Whenever Bernie wanted Leda to do something, she either just straight out didn’t do it, or put up such a huge fight that Bernie
gave up, or changed it into something else that got Bernie all confused. In short, she never simply did it, not ever.

Until now. Leda took Charlie’s hand, led him to the minivan, got in. As they drove off down the mountain road, Bernie calmed down; I could feel it. “You’re a brave boy,” he said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear. Meaning me, of course, although his gaze was on the minivan.

“What’s that word?” Bernie said, turning to Jiggs. “Charade?” First I’d heard of it, so no surprise Bernie seemed uncertain; we’re a lot alike in some ways, don’t forget. “The charade, Jiggsy,” he went on, “is over.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do,” Bernie said. “The murder of April Spears. Thad made a full confession.”

“You’re lying.”

“I even know you cleaned off the knife,” Bernie said. “And helped Thad flee the scene of the crime, making you at least an accessory, possibly an accomplice—I’ll have to read up.”

Jiggs glared at Bernie and said nothing. Perps had that right, so it was cool with me. Was Jiggs a perp? Big-time, for what he’d done to Charlie. And there might have been even more to it. I waited to find out.

“What I don’t know,” Bernie said, “is whether you were skimming from the payments.”

Jiggs kept glaring. He kind of swelled up, like an explosion was coming. Good luck with that, amigo, you down there and us up here. A big vein, thick as this huge worm I’d once dug up—a bit of a shocker, when all you’re trying to do is locate an old bone—pulsed in the side of his neck, and then, like he just couldn’t hold it in an instant longer, out came a loud “Huh?”

“A minor point, but I’d like to clear it up,” Bernie said. “Manny was skimming, so why not you?”

“I’m not a parasite, you goddamn—” Jiggs began and then cut himself off.

“Maybe you’re a killer instead,” Bernie said.

“Setting me up?” Jiggs said. “Forget it. I never laid a finger on her. Wasn’t there that night, and I can prove it.”

“Who said anything about April?” Bernie said. “I’m talking about Manny.”

Jiggs was silent for a few moments. I watched the worm in his neck. When it got to pulsing pretty fast, he said, “Why would I kill that little prick?”

“Killing the blackmailer is one of those classic go-to moves,” Bernie said.

“Doesn’t mean shit,” said Jiggs. “I didn’t do it.”

“But you knew he was dead.”

Jiggs made the slightest little nod.

“How come you didn’t tell Thad?” Bernie said.

“Wouldn’t have made any difference,” Jiggs said. “All it woulda done is upset him, and that’s not my job.”

“What is your job?” Bernie said.

“Looking out for Thad, what do you think?”

“How much does he pay you?”

“He doesn’t have to pay me squat. I’d do it for nothing.”

“Why?”

“I’m loyal,” Jiggs said. “Probably not a concept you understand.”

Had I ever heard anything crazier? The biting urge started up in my teeth, also crazy, since we had Jiggs where we wanted him, meaning the biting period had come to an end. By the time I got all that confusion back under control, or close to it, Jiggs was saying,
“. . . a great artist. He’ll be remembered long after you and I are dead.”

“So will Heinrich Himmler,” Bernie said.

“Who’s he?” said Jiggs.

Bernie smiled. “You win,” he said. He held out his hand, as though to help Jiggs to his feet.

Jiggs ignored Bernie’s hand. His eyes narrowed. “I win? What does that mean?”

“It means I’m offering you a deal,” Bernie said. “If you cooperate, I’ll get you booked on something trivial for what went down today—threatening, harassment, that kind of thing. If you don’t cooperate, it’s the whole enchilada—kidnapping, assault with intent, possession of a deadly weapon.”

“Weapon?”

Bernie pointed to our car door, still cuffed to Jiggs’s wrist, but I wasn’t really paying attention. The whole enchilada! How often had I heard that? Had an enchilada ever put in an appearance? Never. Forget about a whole one—how about just some measly enchilada crumbs? So I was hoping pretty hard that Jiggs would walk away from the deal and maybe I’d get my chance at last.

“. . . cooperate how?” Jiggs was saying.

“Set up a meeting for me,” Bernie said.

“With who?” Jiggs said. A clever look glinted in his eyes. “Thad’s management?”

“In a way,” said Bernie. “I’m talking about Ramon Cardinal.”

Jiggs gazed up at Bernie, his eyes narrowing more. “What do you want with him?”

“Have a drink, kick back,” Bernie said.

“He’s not the type.”

“What type is he?”

Jiggs shrugged. “I haven’t seen him in years.”

“But he must have contacted you, and recently,” Bernie said. “There’s got to be some new system for making the payments now that Manny’s gone.”

Jiggs said nothing. He watched Bernie real carefully, the way perps did when they started getting hip to the fact that Bernie was always the smartest human in the room. And we weren’t even in a room right now, meaning he was the smartest human in the great outdoors! No one was hipper to the fact than me.

“Plus you’re a sharp guy, Jiggs,” Bernie went on. “So when he called, you got his number. I’m betting it’s on your cell phone.”

“Don’t have it on me,” Jiggs said.

“Jiggs? I can see the outline on your pocket.”

Jiggs reached into the pocket of his jeans, gave Bernie the phone.

Bernie squatted down like a catcher, getting closer to Jiggs. He winced the tiniest bit from his leg wound, but you had to be watching real close to spot it. “You’re going to request a face-to-face meeting,” he said, “just the two of you.”

“What if he says no?”

“Tell him you want to make one final payment, a big one on condition it’s also the last.”

“There’s never a last payment with bloodsuckers like him,” Jiggs said.

“You’ll have to do some make-believe,” Bernie said.

“Make-believe?” said Jiggs.

“Like acting,” Bernie told him. “Pretend you’re too dumb to know there’s never an end with bloodsuckers like him. I have faith in you.”

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” Jiggs said.

“The time for recrimination is over,” Bernie said. He pressed a few keys on Jiggs’s phone, checked the screen. “This it?” he said,
turning the phone so Jiggs could see. Jiggs nodded. Bernie gave him the phone. “Say you want to meet in the park across from city hall.”

Jiggs made the call, had a brief talk, clicked off.

“He’ll meet,” Jiggs said, “but not there.”

“Where?” said Bernie.

Jiggs got a new look in his eye, like something was funny. “Behind the old Flower Mart,” he said.

We headed back down the mountain road, Jiggs in the shotgun seat, still cuffed to the door, which rested on his lap, and me on the shelf in back, not at my happiest. Boo Ferris raised the gate.

“You didn’t see anything,” Bernie said.